Ordnance Insignia of the British Army

Arms of Service Strips & Coloured Rank Insignia

In order to give a clearer indication of the various arms or services, all ranks were to wear a strip of coloured material 2” by ¼” on each sleeve of the Battle-Dress blouse immediately below any corps, divisional or other sign worn, strips were also worn on each sleeve of the greatcoat.

RAOC, Arm of Service Strip - First Pattern
(ACI 1118 dated 18 September 1940)

Single Navy Blue coloured strip, Worn on both arms of the Battle Dress Blouse


Example of single Navy Blue strip

This was later amended to -

RAOC, Arm of Service Strip - Second Pattern
(ACI 2587 dated 27 December 1941)

Red-Blue-Red coloured strip, Worn on both arms of the Battle Dress Blouse.

Embroidered AOS colours on khaki background


Coloured felt stitched to a khaki background

In addition to Arms-of-Service Strips and coloured shoulder titles. The Army Council also made provision for colour coded rank insignia.

The recommendation for alterations to existing regulations for officers rank badges on the Battle-Dress was first made in December 1939:

A coloured backing to the badges of rank to be worn by officers only, in order to enable them to be more easily distinguished from other ranks than is at present the case with the regulation plain worsted rank badges.

A selection of Sew-on Rank Insignia for the Battle-Dress Blouse worn by the RAOC

Pre 1941 Blue Rank Star (pips) and Crowns & the more familiar Red Stars (pips) & Crowns.
The backing colour was changed from Navy Blue to Scarlet in ACI 2587 dated 27 Dec 1941
The Dark Blue backing was later adopted by REME (ACI 905 dated 12 June 1943)
Note - Coloured backings for Warrant Officers Badges of Rank was not introduced until after the war by approval of ACI 1193 dated October 1945

Left - Example of a felt, Arms of Service strip stitched onto a Battle-Dress Blouse
Note however that the Officers Pips are Khaki backed and not Red backed as they should be.

Right - The correct Red backed pips, in this case on an Officers blouse with Post WWII War Department Patch.

M Comerford - August 2003 - HTML Revision 1